As we age, maintaining good health requires a proactive approach. Even if you’ve enjoyed excellent health in the past, new challenges can arise over time. Prioritizing preventive care now can help you stay ahead of potential issues and continue enjoying a full and active life.
In this article, we’ll discuss crucial preventive screenings for adults in their senior years, including blood pressure checks, mammograms, cholesterol checks, and much more.
The Importance of Preventive Care for Seniors
The older you are, the more effort you should put into protecting your health. But while managing known conditions is a big part of living a healthy life, you’ll also need to watch out for health problems you aren’t currently aware of.
Detecting these issues early (or stopping them from developing in the first place) is known as “preventive care.” With the help of annual exams and other preventive care services, you can prioritize this form of healthcare and spot health problems before they can do serious damage.
What Health Screenings Do Seniors Need?
Your annual wellness exam or Medicare Annual Wellness Visit is a vital piece of your preventive care strategy. Senior citizens should also get screenings for:
Cholesterol
While high cholesterol can greatly increase your odds of stroke and heart disease, this condition has no symptoms of its own. If you’re a senior, visit your comprehensive primary care provider to check your cholesterol yearly.
To do this, your physician will run a lipid panel — a blood test that measures the cholesterol and other fats in your bloodstream. If your cholesterol level falls outside the ideal range, your doctor may recommend statin medications and lifestyle changes (including increased exercise, smoking cessation, and a healthy diet).
Blood Pressure
As people age, they often experience high blood pressure due to decreased flexibility in their arteries (among other factors). Unmanaged high blood pressure can contribute to stroke, cardiovascular disease, and additional health problems.
Your healthcare provider can perform a quick, easy blood pressure check with an arm cuff. Depending on your results, they may recommend some combination of lifestyle adjustments, medication, and an at-home blood pressure testing kit for regular checks.
Diabetes
About 29.2% of Americans aged 65 or older have diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes, and this isn’t a condition seniors can afford to ignore. In addition to symptoms like fatigue, irritability, and weight loss, diabetes can lead to serious complications such as neuropathy, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease.
To avoid these dangers, anyone who is at least 45 years old should get a diabetes screening every three years. Though diabetes is not currently curable, your healthcare provider can help you create an effective diabetes management plan if you have this disease.
Lung Cancer
Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer-related death in the United States. This is an important fact for seniors to remember, as most people who have lung cancer are at least 65 years old when they receive a diagnosis.
Early detection of lung cancer can lower the mortality risk associated with this disease. If you currently smoke, quit at some point in the past 15 years, or used to smoke 20 packs per year, you should get annual lung cancer screenings between the ages of 50 and 80.
Your primary care clinic can provide lung cancer screenings. If anything suspicious appears during these tests, you may need additional testing. If you do have lung cancer, treatments such as radiation, excision, and chemotherapy may help.
Breast Cancer
If you’re a woman over the age of 40, you should get a mammogram on an annual basis — even if you don’t have any symptoms of breast cancer. This low-dose X-ray examination can detect breast cancer, cysts, and benign tumors.
After completing your mammogram, your healthcare provider will talk to you about your test results. If your results indicate that you could have breast cancer, you might need a breast MRI; if that test’s findings are inconclusive, you may also have to get a tissue biopsy.
While women are often encouraged to get mammograms, men can develop breast cancer too. If you are a man with risk factors such as radiation exposure, a family history of breast cancer, or BRCA1/BRCA2 gene mutations, you should also receive breast cancer screenings.
Dementia
Though there is no cure for dementia, early detection of this condition is still important. Getting a dementia diagnosis as soon as possible allows you to receive more effective treatment, plan for the future, and take part in discussions about your long-term care, finances, and legal issues.
Seniors can benefit from getting a cognitive assessment at their primary care clinic. This is especially true if you’ve noticed symptoms associated with dementia in your daily life.
Depression
Between health problems, life changes, and loneliness, seniors have a higher-than-average risk of depression. You’ll need to be on the lookout for this condition, and professional screenings can help.
During visits to your primary care clinic, your provider may ask you screening questions related to depression. If you believe you may be struggling with depression, you can also ask your provider for help. Antidepressants, therapy, or a combination of these treatments can help people deal with depression.
Get Screenings and More at Complete Health
Are you a senior in need of the screenings listed above (or any other healthcare service)? If so, your first step should be finding a primary care clinic you can trust to handle preventive screenings for adults. If these screenings uncover a health issue that calls for specialized care, the people working at your clinic should be able to refer you to a qualified specialist.
At Complete Health, we go above and beyond when it comes to providing senior healthcare services — and we’re happy to help seniors get the screenings they’re looking for. We also accept Medicare (including Medicare Advantage) and commercial plans, making it easy for our patients to afford the screenings they need. Take the first step toward scheduling these screenings by finding a primary care clinic near you!